The Sister Who Let Go

The door would not open.

She put her whole weight against it, and it gave nothing. It was a slab of pearl, smooth and cold and apparently a foot thick, and it held against her shoulder as the side of a mountain holds against a gale. She kicked it. She beat on it with her fists. She sat back on the top step, on the narrow ledge of fading light, and stared at it with her teeth clenched, and understood with a slow dreadful clarity that she had run all this way for nothing.

It's him, she thought. He's shut it. He can hear me, and he's shut the door.

"Casimir," said Elowen, to the blank pearl. "I know you're in there."

Silence.

"I'm not going to shout. I've shouted enough. I just want you to know that I'm here, and I'm not going away. I'm going to sit on this step until the house falls, if that's what it takes." Her voice shook. "I'll be very annoying. I'll sing the goose song. I know all the verses."

Nothing.

She put her forehead on the cool surface of the door, and shut her eyes.

And the door said, in a voice she knew as well as her own:

"Lowie."

…

She jerked back.

The pearl had changed. It was no longer opaque. It had gone clear, like a pond when the silt sinks, and in its depths a shape was rising. It came up slowly, with a sound of very distant chiming. First the dark of a braid. Then the pale oval of a face. Then the soft folds of a periwinkle gown, floating, as in water, and a pair of dark eyes that looked out at her through the crystal with such tenderness that her heart turned over.

"Dee."

"Hello, my love."

It was the door, she realized. The door was a mirror. It was the one pane left in the keep that still held a reflection, the last unbroken eye in a blind house, and her sister was in it. Not behind it. In it. She looked small and pale and rather frayed at the edges, like a drawing left too long in the sun.

"You're awake," said Elowen.

"I've been awake since last night." The glass lips curved. "It's rather hard to sleep through, when your whole self is being let out of the bag. He put out the windows one at a time. I felt every one. It was like having my teeth drawn."

"Is he—"

"He's alive. He's in the room behind me." Elodie's smile faded. "But, Lowie, he's almost gone."

Elowen pressed both hands to the pane.

"Let me in."

"I can't."

"You're the keystone. You're holding the house. You can open the door."

"I could." The dark eyes were very steady. "I'd like you to hear why I won't. And then, if you still want to, I'll let you through."

"There isn't time!"

"There's a little." Elodie lifted her hand. It met Elowen's through the glass, palm to palm, and it was warm. "He's not going to die in the next minute. He's very slow. He's putting himself out like a man blowing out candles in a church, one at a time, to be sure of leaving it tidy. We have a quarter of an hour. Perhaps more." The voice dropped. "I've been waiting for you to come since the storm. Please. Let me say it."

She swallowed. She nodded.

…

"I was wrong," said Elodie.

It was the simplest thing in the world. She said it quietly, in the small clear voice of a girl reciting a lesson she has learned the hard way, with her palm flat against her sister's.

"I want to say that first. I want it to be the very first thing. I was wrong. I thought I was being brave. I thought I was being selfless, and good, and noble, and all the things that girls are supposed to be in stories. I thought I was saving him." Her mouth twisted. "I was running away. I was running as fast as I could in the only direction that didn't have a chair in it."

"Dee—"

"Let me finish." The glass eyes were bright. "I stood in that pillar for four months. I held up a house. I felt every crack, and every storm, and every wretched Echo whimpering in the corners. And I thought: this is what it is to be needed. I thought: this is what I always wanted." A tear ran down the clear cheek. "And I hated it. Lowie, I hated every minute. It was so cold. It was so very quiet. I could hear Mam, and Papa, and the plum trees, and every sound of home, and not one of them could hear me."

Elowen could not speak.

"I told myself I'd chosen. And I had. That was the awful part. It wasn't a trap. I could have said no, at the very last, and he'd have let me go. But by then I had said yes so many times that I didn't know how to say the other word." The voice cracked. "That's what keeping is. It's not a wall. It's a thousand little yeses, one after another, until you've forgotten you were ever allowed to leave."

"I know. I saw. I saw Rosalind."

"Then you know what I'm telling you." Elodie leaned closer to the glass. "He's doing the same thing now. In there. He's saying yes, and yes, and yes, one window after another. He thinks it's the opposite. He thinks he's letting go. But it's the same trap, in a different coat." She drew a breath. "He's decided to be a martyr. And a martyr is just a man who's found a better place to hide."

"He's trying to save me."

"He's trying to save himself from having to do the hard thing." The words were gentle. "From staying. From being born. From standing in the middle of a freezing mountainside with a new heart, and no idea how to use it, and you looking at him." Her smile was sad. "It's easier to die, you know. It's quicker. I should have known. I tried it myself."

…

"The verse," said Elowen.

She had to say it. She felt the minutes running through her fingers like water.

"Yes."

"Tell me. Please. I need the words."

"I know you do." Elodie's gaze did not waver. "That's why I'm talking. That's the other thing I want to tell you, before I do." She took a breath. "It isn't really a song, Lowie. It's an answer."

"An answer to what?"

"To the wish." The dark eyes were distant. "I've had four months to think about it. In the pillar, you can't help it. You hear the whole thing. You hear what's under the tune. The lady made her wish in a high white room, and she said, let nothing of him be lost. And the house heard her. And it did exactly as it was told." She smiled faintly. "But she was a clever woman, our great-great-great-I-don't-know-how-many-times grandmother. She was a weaver. She knew that a wish is a knot, and a knot can be untied. So she left a thread hanging. A loose end. She sang one more verse, as she went out into the snow. And she put it in her blood, and the blood of everyone who came after, so that one day, somebody might hear it, and finish it."

"Finish it how?"

"I can't tell you." Elodie shook her head. "I'm sorry. It isn't a thing that can be explained. It's a thing that has to be sung." She hesitated. "But I can tell you what it means. The first three verses are the wish. Keep it. Keep it small. Keep it bright. The fourth is the answer. It says: and now let it go."

"That's all?"

"That's all." The voice trembled. "And it's everything. Because it's not a spell for making him a man. It doesn't make anything. It only lets go. It takes the knot and unpicks it, thread by thread, so that what's inside can finally breathe. And what's inside is him. The boy. The love. Whatever it was that Mam, or whoever she was, put in at the start."

"And then?"

"And then it's up to you." She swallowed. "That's the price. That's what I couldn't pay. The verse opens the knot. But a heart that has never beaten has to be started, and the only way to start it is with a warmth that's real. You'll have to weave it. You'll have to give it a life to start from. And you'll have to pay for that, as the lady did, in your own memory, as much as it takes."

Elowen stood very still.

"I was frightened, Lowie," said Elodie. "I didn't have the courage. I looked at it, in the end, and I thought: I can't. Not Mam, and Papa, and Edmund. Not the plum trees." Her eyes shone. "And I was right to be afraid. It's a terrible price. It's the worst there is. But I think I was also wrong. Because I never asked if there was another way to pay."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'm still holding the house."

…

The door shivered.

It was the faintest movement. It ran across the pearl in a ripple, and the light in the stair flickered, and for a moment Elodie's image blurred, and re-formed. Her braid stirred, as if in a draft. She lifted her free hand, and cupped it, palm up, and held it in the air between them.

In it lay a thread.

It was silver. It was no longer than a finger, and finer than a spider's silk. It glowed with a faint pale light, like moonlight on a pond. It hung in her palm without weight, trembling slightly, and when Elowen looked at it she felt a sort of strange, aching familiarity, as at the smell of an old cupboard.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"It's what's left of me."

"Dee—"

"Not all of it. A little. The part that's been standing still." Elodie's smile was crooked. "I told you, I've been in the pillar four months. I've been holding. Every second of it has gone somewhere. It's been piling up in me like snow in a field, and I've nothing to do with it. It's no use to me. It's only stillness." She turned her hand. The thread glimmered. "But it's time, Lowie. It's four months of unspent time. And a heart needs that, to start. A new heart needs a store of stillness to lean on, a bit of rest to begin with, so it doesn't have to run before it's learned to walk."

"You're giving it to me."

"I'm giving it to him." She lifted her eyes. "You'll weave it in. With the verse. It won't pay the whole price, I'm afraid. You'll still need to give something of your own. But it will be a great deal less. Perhaps a tenth of what it would have been." Her voice quavered. "Perhaps only the song."

"The song?"

"It's a hard thing to give. I know." The dark eyes were wet. "But it's only one."

Elowen was crying silently, the tears running down her face and off her chin. She could not seem to stop them. She pressed her forehead to the pane, and felt the cold smooth surface, and the warmth of her sister's palm beyond.

"I can't take it from you," she said. "You'll be... you won't be... what'll happen to you?"

"I don't know."

"Dee."

"I really don't." Elodie laughed, and it was a bright shaky sound. "I might wake up. I might not. I might turn into a puddle. I might just go home." Her face softened. "But I want to find out. Do you understand? I don't want to be kept. I'd rather take my chance in the dark. I've been still for so long." She breathed in. "I want to be sad properly. I want to see Edmund's chair, and cry on it, and then I want to move it into the barn."

Elowen made a sound that was part laugh, part sob.

"Say hello to Mam," said Elodie. "If I don't wake. Tell her I wasn't afraid. Tell her I was thinking about the plums."

"You tell her yourself."

"I'm going to try." The glass eyes crinkled. "But I want you to hear it, Lowie. This is the real goodbye. The other one, the note and the box and the door in the mountain, that was nothing. That was running." She pressed her palm harder to the pane. "This is me, looking at you, and saying: I love you. I've always loved you. You're the best thing I ever had. And I'm letting go of you, because it's the only way I can give you back."

…

She did not remember opening her hand.

She remembered only that the thread was in it, a minute later, weightless and cool, and that it glowed against her palm like a drop of moonlight. She closed her fingers, gently. She put it in the breast pocket of her coat, beside the music box, over her heart. She felt it settle there, like a bird.

"The words," said Elowen, in a whisper.

"Close your eyes."

She closed them.

And her sister sang.

It was not the song she knew. It was not the tune of the box, nor the lullaby of the kitchen, nor the one she had sung to a hundred mirrors. It was older. It was lower, and slower, and stranger, in a tongue she had never heard and understood at once. The words were soft and rough and round, full of hills and weather. They came up out of the dark like the smell of bread. They went into her, not through her ears but through her bones, and she felt them settle in her chest beside the thread: four lines, and then four more, a whole bright small poem, falling like seed into plowed ground.

Oh, she thought. It's so simple.

It was always so simple.

When the voice stopped, she stood for a time with her eyes shut. She felt the verse in her. She felt it all the way down, in the roots of her hair, in the soles of her feet, warm and complete and clear. She knew it as she knew her name. She knew it as she'd once known her mother's face.

"Got it?" said Elodie.

"I think so."

"Good." The pane warmed. "Then I'll let you through."

She opened her eyes.

Her sister's reflection was fading. It dimmed from the edges inward, gently, like a candle at the end of the wick. She could see the stars through the periwinkle gown, and the braid, and the dark brave eyes. She lifted her hand in a last small wave, and Elowen lifted hers, and for a moment they stood palm to palm with nothing between them but a quarter-inch of light.

"Go on, Lowie," said Elodie. "Go and get him."

The pearl door swung open.

…

Beyond it was white.

It was a whiteness she had never seen. It was not the white of snow, or paper, or the glare of a winter noon. It was a blankness. It was the white of a page before the first word. It filled the whole round chamber from floor to ceiling, and it had neither depth nor edge nor shadow, and she stood on the threshold with her eyes watering, unable to tell if she was looking at a room or a void.

The pillar was gone.

It had been there yesterday, the great crystal column with its silver veins, and her sister's calm face. Now there was only a faint outline, a ghost of a column, drawn in the whiteness like a pencil mark. The floor was gone. The walls were gone. The thin pale light that had hummed in the chamber had faded to a glimmer.

In the middle of the emptiness, a man was standing.

He had his back to her. He stood very straight, with his hands at his sides and his head bowed, in a dark close-buttoned coat. And he was nearly invisible. She could see the white straight through him. She could see the faint outline of his shoulders, the dim line of his hair. His hands were only a glimmer in the air. The green thread on his wrist burned out of the nothing like a single leaf.

He was humming.

It was very quiet. It was the tune of the song, over and over, the first three verses, in a faint thin voice like a boy's. He hummed it as one hums in the dark, to keep the fear away, and as he hummed, the edges of him came apart, flake by flake, and drifted up into the white like smoke.

"Casimir," said Elowen.

He did not turn.

She took one step into the whiteness, and the floor, which was not there, rang beneath her like a bell.